A Shadow of Reality
by Izwick
Summary: After the death of his flat mate, John is left surrounded by fading shadows - until a shadow appears that jolts him out of his apathy.


The shifting shadows of afternoon sun that filtered softly through the windows was all that served to mark the passage of time for John as he sat stiff and motionless in his chair. Some days he mustered the strength to venture outside the flat; some days he would go through the motions of living, and present a face to the world that masked all that nameless inner anguish. But other days, when the grayness of the world and the emptiness of his heart overwhelmed him, John would sit in silence and wait for the shadows of evening to consume him.

Thought had become his enemy. Every second that John spent in thinking, in remembering, was overtaken by a realization of loss. Everything he did, everywhere he went, was tainted by that horrible knowledge that he was yet again alone. So he tried to flee his own mind. Embrace the emptiness that filled his soul. Perhaps, if he could shut out the cruel world and shut out his poisonous thoughts, then he could forget that his flat mate was gone forever.

_Sherlock…_

The name floated across the grayness of John's mind, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Before his state of semi-unconsciousness could be shattered by the associations that name always brought, John began analyzing the label. Sounding it out. Reducing it to a string of meaningless letters.

_S_

_H_

_E_

_R_

_L_

_O_

_C_

_K_

Unable to stand it any longer, John cast the name away, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Mrs. Hudson had woken him up that morning with a gentle knock on his door, like he had asked her to, but he had lain in bed for almost an hour, too exhausted even to stir. After searching halfheartedly for any sort of motivation to rise, John had finally stumbled out of bed to make a cup of tea he had not bothered to drink. Then he had watched telly for a while, losing himself in the chaos of the flickering images that danced across the screen. But as time had passed and faded, the meaningless motions of the soulless actors began to remind him too much of real life, so he had turned it off.

Now the swirls of dust that had floated lazily in the fading light had long since settled onto every available surface, undisturbed by any living thing. John looked about the flat with a grimace. It had been messy before, but now the scattered papers gathered dust, while stained mugs lay about in perpetual disuse. In the first few weeks that followed those…events, John had received many offers to help clean out all of his old flat mate's belongings – all the tobacco testing equipment, the results of various gruesome scientific experiments, and that little pile of unwanted presents hidden in the back of his closet. But John refused them all, because to erase such evidence of the past would be as counterintuitive as deleting knowledge of the solar system.

And yet he never looked directly at them, those reminders of his flat mate, only the shadows that they threw. The skull on the mantel, and the long, twisted shadow it cast on the carpet. The outline of one of his flat mate's jackets left carelessly on a chair thrown out in a strange distortion by the illumination of the sun. And as the afternoon slowly diminished into evening, John watched in silence as the shadows, shifted, lengthened, and then, as the sun dwindled to nothingness, merged to become one cohesive darkness.

Hours passed, and John slipped into unawareness, until he heard a faint creak, and he looked up to see that the darkness had been marred by a square of light suddenly shining forth from the doorway. And in that yellowish light there appeared a shadow, an outline so familiar that John would have known it anywhere. Long and narrow, wearing a coat with upturned collar, and topped by messy curls, it was clearly the outline of his former flat mate.

_Sherlock…_

Startled into an unexpected hope, John whispered the name, and it floated out into the air as a tentative question that was soon enveloped by the quiet of the room. Quickly he closed his eyes, to convince himself that was no one there.

_No. Just a shadow. That's what my world is now, just shadows. You know that reality faded once he was gone…nothing but pain there. The shadows are safe, silent, they can't hurt you. That's all that's left, shadow, and that's all that it is, shadow, shadow, shadow, and nothing more._

John opened his eyes, slowly, hesitantly, only to see that the light was gone, that horribly familiar shadow was gone, to be replaced once more by empty darkness. An ineffable feeling of despair washed over him, and a tightness grew in his chest. For a moment he struggled to breathe, and his hands clenched the armrests, but then the familiar tiredness overcame him, and he sank again into lethargy.

Suddenly, John stiffened, as awareness flooded back. What was that noise he had heard? A footstep? And then he felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder, and the heat of it felt even through his jumper proclaimed it to be true flesh and blood. Shaking, breathless, too afraid of disappointment to even start to hope, John looked up from his apathetic stare to find that mere shadow had become tangible reality.

"Hello, John."


End file.
